A Mightier Mouse
In a weird, but not entirely surprising, moment of synchronicity, my wife and I bought each other the same present for Christmas this year — we each got the other a new mouse. This being Christmas, of course, though, we didn’t simply nip down Dick Smith’s and pick up a quick Logitech point-and-click doohickey — no, it was Christmas, and so, to make things a little more special, we each got a Magic Mouse.
Apple have been trying to get the mouse right ever since they first brought it to the market. The first was a horrible, blocky affair, a brick of pale-turd-brown plastic with a slightly less pale turd-brown button on the top. Since then it has become curvier, then — and this, surely, marked the utter nadir of mousely design — perfectly round and exactly one-and-one-eighth inches too short to use with any real degree of comfort. Oddly, though, because it was part of the iMac package, it did prompt plenty of strangely gushing comment, including remarks in MacWorld that watching the two-coloured ball rotate as the mouse was moved was “hypnotic” and “mesmerising;” clearly MacWorld’s editorial staff back at the turn of the millennium didn’t get out all that much.
Apple’s next mouse was a much more successful design for one particular reason — it used laser tracking instead of a ball. Suddenly mousing became much more accurate. But it was still a one-button mouse, and this was the cause of much consternation to many users, who simply could not understand why Apple refused, so totally obstinately (a quality surely not attributable to Steve Jobs?), to incorporate a second button. Right-clicking, it seemed, was PC thing to do; right-clicking was of the Devil.
But then came the Mighty Mouse, and this was a decent piece of kit, but it did lead to much wailing and rending of garments, since it, finally, included the heresy of a second button. Actually, it included no such thing — there was still only one button, but the software that read the mouse was sufficiently sophisticated to sense where the click was being applied, and so Apple, as obstinate as ever, managed to produce a two-button mouse with only one button. In fact, this being Apple, there were, in fact, four buttons, real and virtual. But the pinch gesture that constituted the fourth button was far from inspired; simply picking the mouse up was often enough to trigger Exposé or Dashboard. And the actual, physical second button, the scroll nipple, added two-dimensional scrolling, which was a wonderful innovation, but the nipple itself would routinely gum up and become, effectively, useless; a mouse that would scroll up, but not down, was neither uncommon nor helpful.
Apple's new Magic Mouse
Apple tried again this year. The Magic Mouse was released in October, but I didn’t get mine until December (I did write to Apple asking for a review sample for Steve’s TechBlog; I’m still waiting for my reply). Their latest attempt returns to absolute minimalism; there is, it would appear, no physical button at all. The device is, basically, a gently humped surface that sits, cordless, on my desk, all gleaming i-white. That’s it — no cable, since this mouse is only available in Bluetooth, and no nipple, since the surface is the mouse. Just like the Mighty Mouse before it, the Magic Mouse has only one clicking surface, only one physical button, but again the software detects where the click happened.
But other things are missing. The scroll nipple, mercifully, has gone. Scrolling is achieved simply by flicking a finger along the length of the mouse’s surface; with the correct software update installed (it requires Mac OS X 10.6.2, of which more later), you get what Apple are calling “momentum scrolling,” a feature that will be familiar to iPhone and iTouch users — flick a window and it keeps scrolling, slowing down in what seems quite a natural manner once you take your finger off the mouse. It works — surprisingly well. A solid-state solution, then, to the moving-part problem of the nipple. But the nipple also was the third button, and, without it, there is no third button — or, indeed, the fourth squeeze-the-sides button. I wasn’t in the habit of using those two buttons on my old Mighty Mouse, so I doubt that I will miss them, but I have read a handful of rather unhappy reviews and comments bemoaning the loss of this button, claiming that all “serious” users (clearly I’m just a frivolous, trivial user; oh, well) use, indeed need, that third button. I remain unconvinced.
There are, incidentally, third-party solutions to this shocking problem. I’ve been playing today with a little piece of software called MagicPrefs; it extends the Magic Mouse’s vocabulary of taps, clicks and gestures to really explore the multi-touch capabilities of the device, since basically it’s a mouse with a multi-touch surface bolted to the top of it. Frankly, I find it overkill. I’ve configured two extra things — a three-fingered click opens Dashboard, and a three-fingered tap triggers Exposé. But that’s all — anything else and I find windows hiding and zooming and flying across my desktop as though possessed. Not good.
But what does it feel like in the hand? Well, it’s not the hockey puck of days gone by. It’s about as broad and as long as the Mighty, but about half the height, which means that if you’re used to having your hand rest on top of your mouse, you’re in for a little bit of a surprise. It feels not uncomfortable so much as unfamiliar; I’ve had mine less than twelve hours, so I can’t say for sure yet, but I suspect that I will get used to it very soon. I do have decently large hands, mind, and I find that my wrist sits firmly on my desk while my fingers manipulate the thing.
And it is easy enough to manipulate. The wireless Mighty Mouse was a heavy thing — it was a clunky deadweight to drag around the surface of a desk. The new Magic Mouse feels about as heavy as a corded Mighty Mouse — an entirely comfortable weight, even with batteries installed (and full credit to Apple for including the requisite pair of AAAs in the box). On my desk, at least, the two black plastic rails on the underside of the mouse grip the surface of the desk quite decently, so that the two-fingered side-to-side swipe that is the only out-of-the-box Apple-offered multi-touch gesture causes no problems; the mouse doesn’t slip around when I swipe, although a different desk surface might give different results. The click of the mouse is much more positive than the click of the Mighty Mouse; the pressure required to click it is definitely a bit higher, as is the travel of the click, and there is a more noticeable da-dit sound as the button goes up and down.
Aesthetically, of course, it’s enormously pleasing — plain white, with only a ghostly-grey Apple at the tail of the mouse to show which way round it should sit — I have been dense enough once already today to try to use it back-t0-front, which works surprisingly badly. The packaging is typically Apple, too — a clear perspex box contains the mouse, which sits on a small white plastic tray which, I suppose, one could use as a stand or a home for the thing when it’s not in use on the desktop.
Overall, then, a pretty solid upgrade to the Apple mouse line. It was expensive — NZ$119 — but Christmas gave me and the missus a great opportunity to treat ourselves (well, each other, really — we didn’t actually plan things that way; we’re not quite that sad), and so far I think I’m pleased with my new mouse’s magic.
Apple’s Magic Mouse Rating: 
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